Caribbean NY in June – 2015

June is Caribbean-American Heritage Month in the US, and there is no where better to celebrate it than in Brooklyn, NY – home of the largest Caribbean population in the US. Here’s a look at some of the hottest celebratory events in the Borough.

Caribbean-American Heritage Month Celebration
with the Brooklyn Borough President
at Borough Hall
June 5-26

This signature event will take guests on an enchanting journey that will encapsulate the vibrant cultures, eclectic cuisines, pulsating rhythms and quintessential experiences to be enjoyed in the Caribbean. Guests will be exposed to the varied Rums of the Caribbean as well as the talents and artistic flair of some of the Caribbean’s award winning musicians, chefs and mixologists. This memorable evening promises to be the highlight of the Caribbean Week social calendar with special appearances by top personalities/celebrities.

WORD! – A Caribbean Book Fest, is an afternoon-long celebration of Caribbean letters and thought for all ages. The program highlights the range and diversity of literary work emanating from the Caribbean and writers invested in the Caribbean Diasporic narrative.

The Storytellers!
2:30pm
Book Business – First Book Journeys
Authors share their experiences about having their debut novels being printed. Featuring Elsie Augustave (Haiti), The Roving Tree, A. Naomi Jackson (US/Antigua & Barbuda), The Star Side of Bird Hill; Annette Vendryes Leach (US/Panama), Song of the Shaman.
Moderator: Petra Lewis, Sons and Daughters of Ham

6:00pm
Walking in the Sun – Marlon James (Jamaica), A Brief History of Seven Killings
“…perhaps the best book of 2014. Set in Jamaica, it is a work of historical fiction based on true events: it details the days leading up to, and the fall out after, an assassination attempt on famed singer Bob Marley.” (Brook Stephenson, Gwaker)
Moderators: Beverly Benjamin-George, President, Friends of the Antigua & Barbuda Public Library and Ron Kavanaugh, publisher, Mosaic Literary Magazine.

New Traditions: A Showcase for Caribbean Choreographers
June 7
at Founders Hall, St. Francis College
Dance Caribbean Collective
Click HERE to purchase tickets.

Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE is a representative body that facilitates and promotes Caribbean Dance, Caribbean Dancers and those that present and practise Caribbean dance forms and/or deal with Caribbean content.

Mala Mala is a feature-length documentary about the power of transformation told through the eyes of 9 trans-identifying individuals in Puerto Rico.

Watch the trailer:

Mala Mala -Teaser (2014) Tribeca Film Festival

The Price of Memory
by Karen Mafundikwa
Documentary Feature
Jamaica

When Queen Elizabeth II visits Jamaica for her Golden Jubilee Celebrations in 2002, she is petitioned by a small group of Rastafari for slavery reparations. For Rastafari, reparations is linked to a desire to move back to Africa, the homeland of their African ancestors who were brought to Jamaica as slaves. The film traces this petition, as well as a slavery reparations lawsuit filed against the Queen in Jamaica. We follow Ras Lion a mystic Rasta farmer who petitioned the Queen, and Michael Lorne; the attorney who brought the lawsuit. In the background are the stories of earlier Rastas who pursued reparations in the 1960s, revealing an ongoing demand that spans decades. Filmed over a decade, on location in Jamaica and the UK, the film follows the filmmaker on a journey into the past, during which the question of reparations reaches Parliament in both Jamaica and the UK. The film is an exploration of the enduring legacies of slavery and the case for slavery reparations in modern Jamaica.

Watch the trailer:

The Price of Memory trailer

The Film intertwines re-enacted vignettes of pivotal moments in the pre-history and history of pan from 1820 to 1963, from the banning of slave drum dances, to the first Panorama, with today’s “reality” narrative of the competition, in which various pan players from Trinidad and Tobago and abroad join the bands to prepare for the big stage.

Jevanni, a 10-year-old ghetto boy, struggles to qualify to play in Trinidad All Stars, the band founded by his grandfather. Eva, a footloose 27-year-old Frenchwoman in Trinidad for the first time, hopes to play on the big night—the Panorama finals, the dream of her recently-deceased father. But her band, birdsong, has been eliminated at the semi-finals so she must quickly learn a new tune well enough to get into another band. Raven, 19, known as a “crackshot” for illegally playing in several bands under different names, can learn in hours what takes others days. But he is on the verge of being thrown out of his first love, Phase II Pan Groove. Also knocking on the Phase II door are Yukari, Sayori, Kentaro and Chihiro, who are from Japan and can barely speak English but sacrificed job security to be here.

Will they get on the team? If they do, will their team win? This story of the adventure and passion of pan derives its momentum and drama from the intersecting lives and ambitions of these and other characters as they prepare for battle in Panorama: the Olympics of music. Their stories are interlaced with re-enactments of the rags-to-riches tale of the steelband movement, which was born into poverty and violence but climbed to the highest levels of social and artistic acceptance without losing its life-or-death urgency.